Reply #31: The Big Lie that is skewing the Iraq debate (David Sirota) [View All]

Throughout the political coverage and chatter about Iraq, it seems there is a virulent assumption that has jumped from theory into fact, without even a shred of factual support. I'm not talking about there only being a small amount of proof - I'm talking about an assumption that is being made by "experts," "operatives" and the media analysts with literally absolutely no evidence at all. It is so egregious that to call it an assumption is to be dishonest - what it is is a lie.
Listen to today's NPR piece, and you will hear this assumption all the way through, from both politicians and political "experts."

The assumption is simple: it basically states as fact that those who support an exit strategy in Iraq will not only be attacked as "cut and run" cowards (like the GOP attacked Jack Murtha), but that voters will give credence to those attacks. Put another way, the political Establishment - which prides itself on "expertly" reading public opinion data - is actually ignoring all the hard data and simply assuming that Americans will politically punish those who support a withdrawal. In the process, they are asserting as fact the concept that Republicans will be able to use the war as a political bludgeon - as a winning issue - when all the hard evidence says the exact opposite.


Let's be clear - polls have consistently shown that on the issue of when/whether to bring troops home, the public is at best evenly split, and more often in favor of an exit strategy. But beyond this question of policy is the clear, crisp evidence that the entire population - regardless of their position on when/whether to bring troops home - is angry about the war and about the administration's behavior surrounding the war. And, at the absolute least, that should lead us to believe that even the minority of voters who say they do not yet support a withdrawal will not electorally punish politicians who do support a withdrawal. For to believe the Establishment's assumption that pro-exit-strategy candidates will actually be punished, you have to actually believe the public is going to simply forget its overarching anger about the war itself, about the President's dishonesty and mismanagement, and about the desire of every patriotic American to see our troops brought out of harms way. That's positively insane.